Does Writing a Blog for My Business Matter Anymore?
We hear this question all the time, and it has a definitive answer. Writing a blog takes effort, but does it pay off? There are a multitude of benefits that can be gained by blogging, so let's start by walking through a few of them.
Staying front of mind for your current and future customers is the goal. However, this can also be a battle.
Consistently publishing and sending out new content gives your brand a sticky factor that is difficult to achieve in other ways.
To get the same return on investment that a blog can give in this area, you would be spending thousands of dollars in paid ads and placements to see the same results.
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Writing a Blog = Content Marketing
If you have never heard the term content marketing, it is the creation of content with the intention of future customers finding that content as an introduction to your company, products, and services.
9 Benefits of Writing a Blog
- Get More Traffic to Your Website - People on the internet won't visit your website unless they have a good reason, and reading your blog articles is a fantastic reason to drop by. You have industry knowledge that people are looking for online, and there's no reason that you can't be the expert they find to answer their questions.
- Gain More Customers for Your Business - There's a term in marketing called "Front of Mind" which means that you always want to be the first thing that comes to mind when your subject or industry comes up in a discussion. If you are actively blogging, you are staying out in front of your potential customers and keeping yourself front of mind. This results in your company being thought of more and more often whenever someone needs your services. Blogging can help ignite a fire under your referral engine!
- Gain Influence - Who are the influencers in your field? Are they the untouchable multi-millionaires that people can't reach or talk to? My question to most business owners is, "Why aren't you an influencer?" I often get looked at like I'm crazy, but the question remains valid. Anyone can become an influencer in their market or area. It just takes intentional planning to continually speak out on your area of expertise and helping others recognize the value that you bring to your industry.
- Establish Yourself as an Authority - Have you ever been on LinkedIn? It's a social media platform designed for professional networking and connection, and people are always looking to share articles that make them look good. There's a secret that nobody talks about though... Hardly anyone writes articles themselves, instead they simply take an article that someone else has written and link to it. The influencers and authorities in any niche are the ones who take the time to write the content that people share. You can establish yourself as an authority if you simply get out there and write helpful content.
- Build a Network - There are networking groups that meet all over the country working to connect business owners with each other. You'll often find about 20 people sitting in a room trying to sell each other their products and services, and in most cases with little success. Writing a blog can be an incredible asset to networking in your field and local area. Instead of sitting in a room with 20 people, you can be sharing online with thousands!
- Improve Your SEO Ranking - It's impossible to rank in search engines like Google and Bing without content like blog articles. The search engines need words to read in order to rank any page on the internet, and blogging is one of the best ways to keep new content in front of Google to raise your keyword rankings.
- Build Trust Online - It's hard today to build trust with people, but writing a blog is one way that you can establish a history of helping people. Many visitors will write comments and give you reviews establishing a history of trust that is hard to gain any other way.
- Help Others - It may sound simple, but helping others should be one of your primary customer aquisition tools. You can help your potential customers with their entry level problems through how to videos, blog articles and photo examples of how to solve their problems. Once you've helped them with their easy problems in your industry, you're the one they'll call when a larger issue comes up in the future.
- Build Your Email List - It's hard to run a business without an email list in this marketing climate, and writing a blog allows you to gather email addresses from your readers. With each new blog article, create a call to action that gives your audience a reason to identify themselves so you can add them to your email list. If you're offering real value in your emails, your future customers will thank you.
If you have never heard the term, it is the creation of content with the intention of future customers finding that content as an introduction to your company, products, and services.
Writing a blog is a perfect way to grow your business, and we recommend it to every one of our clients as they look to grow their leads and sales.
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